Steven Spielberg has been tapped to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Directors Guild of America, DGA President Jack Shea announced today. Formerly known as the D.W. Griffith Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award honors distinguished career achievement in motion picture directing, and is the Guild’s highest tribute. The Award was last given in 1998, to Francis Ford Coppola. Spielberg will be officially presented with the award at the 52nd Annual DGA Awards on March 11, 2000.

"It is truly astonishing that Steven Spielberg, with so many great films still ahead of him, is already such a perfect choice for the ultimate directorial honor," DGA President Shea said. "Although he is still in the prime of his career, Steven has already won a record three DGA Feature Film Awards and been nominated a record nine times in that category. And it is particularly fitting that the DGA, an organization of people who truly understand what a monumental feat it is to consistently direct such amazing films, is paying tribute once again to his immense talent."

Spielberg’s three DGA Awards for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film have come for The Color Purple, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, with six additional nominations for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun and Amistad. Fourteen years ago, Spielberg’s DGA Award win for The Color Purple marked his first major Hollywood award.

Spielberg has also won two Academy Awards, for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, and has received the Academy’s Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. His directing career has spanned more than three decades, and also includes films such as The Sugarland Express, 1941, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Always, Hook, Jurassic Park and The Lost World.

The DGA Lifetime Achievement Award (formerly known as the D.W. Griffith Award) was first presented in 1953, and has been bestowed twenty-nine times. Awardees are selected by a panel composed of the current and all living past presidents of the DGA.